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Topeka, KS - BBM Canada a leading supplier of radio and television audience ratings services across Canada, recently implemented INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager, the leading Agentless™ IT management solution, resulting in increased IT efficiency and a lowered total cost of IT ownership across the organization.

The company is one of the largest and most experienced research suppliers in Canada, and its services include a digital broadcast-ready TV people meter system, diary surveys for more than 100 radio and television markets, and a variety of syndicated and custom research studies.

Real Time Audits

BBM Canada deals with real time data, and the need to efficiently manage this data translates into a very time-consuming task for the BBM Canada IT staff, who are on call 24/7 as a result. In addition to this, BBM CanadaÂ’s IT department also manages around 500 Windows-based desktops and server systems on a daily basis.

“Given the fact that we work with real time data, and very tight deadlines, we need to be flexible with what the users install on their systems so they can do their job in a timely fashion. However, we still need to be able to quickly and accurately determine the presence of unauthorized applications for immediate removal” says Brice Samulenok, Security Officer in the IT division of BBM Canada. “INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager allows us to do just that. In fact, our primary use for Inventory Manager is to get an accurate up-to-date picture of the software installed on the systems to determine what patches need to be applied, and what users are in violation of our Acceptable Use policy.”

Reducing IT Manpower Hours

With an always-on-call IT department, and just 14 IT staff members to manage the 500 Windows desktops and servers in the user segment, as well as additional Linux, Tru64, Solaris, and Novell systems in the data processing segment, manpower hours are a valuable commodity in the IT department at BBM Canada. With the help of Inventory Manager, BBM Canada has been able to significantly reduce the number of IT manpower hours they usually require, particularly in the realm of system audits. “Prior to acquiring INSYSTEK® Inventory Manager it would take a full week of manpower to audit all our 500 systems. It now takes us only 4 hours to accomplish this same task” explains Samulenok.

Corporate Compliance

BBM Canada conducts audits on an on-going basis to verify if necessary security patches are in place, as well as to determine if end-users are in compliance with corporate mandates for permitted software applications.

“We use Inventory Manger to ensure that the user desktop systems only have corporate-approved software installed and that the latest patches are installed on both our server and desktop systems” details Samulenok.

BBM Canada commonly uses Inventory Manager to remove data-mining programs that inevitably get installed (such as IE hot bars). “This operation is run as a scheduled task to clean up our desktop systems. In addition, we use the report functions to keep up-to-date with our Dell service tag and hardware support. This enables us to quickly identify the service tag or serial number of the hardware to provide support for these systems remotely.”

Software Savings

The INSYSTEK® Report Wizard is used by BBM Canada to view software trends by department, and easily communicate any software license violations or non-approved corporate software to the relevant department heads. “This enables us to minimize software ‘overlap’ between departments which wastes resources on redundant software solutions” Samulenok explains.

With Inventory Manager, BBM Canada is able to reduce the time and money they previously spent on managing each individual Windows system, and effectively enforce user policies, ensuring their environment remains both compliant and secure.

“There is more focus on software compliance than ever before,” says Richard Carlsen, CFO of INSYSTEK, “and software asset management (SAM) policies have become a necessity in today’s business-place. BBM Canada understands the need for solid SAM, and our solution provides them with the capabilities to comprehensively manage this aspect of their IT assets and much more; driving down the cost traditionally associated with the ownership and management of software. ”

About INSYSTEK

INSYSTEK, Inc. has established itself as a leader in Agentless™ IT management software, supplying solutions that enable system auditing/inventorying, software distribution/removal, and server performance & availability monitoring capabilities to clients in business, government, education and healthcare in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and South Africa.

More information on INSYSTEK and the full range of INSYSTEK Agentless™ IT management solutions, including free trial versions, can be found at www.insystek.com or by sending an e-mail to info@insystek.com or calling toll free 1-877-467-9783.